Designing and building manufacturing systems (e.g., equipment, processes, devices, etc.) require consideration of many system concerns, such as quality, reliability and health/safety of users, and often use various discrete methodologies for addressing each concern. These concerns often have various methodologies and specifications themselves that are considered “best practices”, that is, methodologies and specifications that are considered optimal for accomplishing a particular task or achieving a particular result. Further, manufacturing systems ideally use the newest technology to implement the optimized practices. Current manufacturing systems, however, are often designed and even built before they are evaluated with respect to best practices and new technology specifications. Because these specifications are often numerous and detailed, the proposed manufacturing equipment/system design will likely require many design changes to address these specification details, increasing the overall time required to finalize any given design. Further, redesigning the equipment/system in an ad hoc increase cost due to redesign(s) later in manufacturing design, procurement, and implementation process (also referred to as a “manufacturing life cycle”).
Currently known methods may address optimized practices relatively late in the manufacturing life cycle, often after an initial design has been completed and even after the manufacturing system has already been built. As a result, known methods require at least some degree of retrofitting on an existing system, even when the system is new, to accommodate best practice and new technology solutions that were not addressed in the system's original design. In some cases, the system is already partially built according to design specifications before proper design reviews occur. These situations typically require modification of the equipment to accommodate any changes suggested or required by the inspectors and re-testing. This process increases opportunities for errors in both the physical structure of the equipment and the equipment's electronic circuitry.
Because incorporating optimized design details after an initial design has been completed and/or after the equipment has been partially or completely built is cumbersome and expensive, there is a need for a manufacturing process that integrates optimization considerations early in the manufacturing life cycle.